Emotions and the non-verbal structuring of relationships
Keith Oatley, University of Toronto

For the most part, when we want to organize either a temporary relationship
(Would you like a coffee this afternoon?) or a more permanent relationship (Will
you marry me?), we think of the arrangements as being made verbally. Indeed
people do make such arrangements verbally. Laurette Laroque and I have found
from studying some 500 joint plans and arrangements that people have made, that
short term relationships and plans generally work well, although mistakes do
sometimes occur. But there are non-verbal aspects to the matter. To make a
mutual plan or arrangement requires a particular emotional state-a mood of
happiness or affection-to set the motivational context. This mood structures the
relationship into a mode of cooperation. When errors do occur, this mood changes
quickly into anxiety, or even more frequently, into anger. Jenny Jenkins and I
have started to develop the idea that the most important functions of emotions
generally are to set up, and sustain, certain kinds of relationships. Anger
provides the outline script of conflict, anxiety the script for protection, and
happiness or affection the script for cooperation. The emotion provides a
(mainly) non-verbal outline script; the words elaborate the details of what
joint goals are to be achieved, and what actions planned. I explore this
framework in a setting of evolutionary psychology, and propose a theory of how
emotions work in the accomplishment of interpersonal goals.